July 23 – Seventeen years after Manmohan Singh "libralized" India's economy leading the nation to attain Asian superpower status, he's once again proven that as a visionary he knows whats needed for India's development and that he's got the nation's support.
After two gruelling days in Parliment house, where leaders of the ruling coalition UPA party fought tooth and nail with their opposition, Manmohan Singh's UPA party won the trust vote by 19 votes. The ruling coalition secured 275 votes as against 256 by the Opposition. As many as 10 members were absent or abstained from voting. The emergency need for a trust vote was called for when the left parties, a large minority in the ruling coalition decided to withdraw from the government as Manmohan Singh agreed to sigh the nuclear deal with America.
Prime Minister Manmohan Singh described the outcome as “a convincing victory” for the UPA government, the Congress and the supporting parties. “This will send a message to the world at large that India is prepared to take its rightful place in the committee of nations,” Dr. Singh told journalists after he emerged from the Parliament House. That means pushing ahead with the nuclear deal, on which Singh has staked his premiership.
The deal is seen as the cornerstone of a budding strategic partnership between the United States and India, which was officially neutral during the Cold War but had warm relations with the Soviet Union. But the communist parties that provided Singh's government with its parliamentary majority have denounced it as a ploy to make India Washington's pawn.
The pact would end more than three decades of nuclear isolation for India, opening its civilian reactors to international inspections in exchange for the nuclear fuel and technology it has been denied by its refusal to sign the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty and its testing of atomic weapons.
To finalize the deal, India must now strike separate agreements with the International Atomic Energy Agency as well as the Nuclear Suppliers Group of countries that export nuclear material. The U.S. Congress will then need to approve the accord.
The White House on Tuesday welcomed the government's victory the AFP reporetd.
